There’s a pretty good argument for saying that while Bill Gates may be the richest person in the world, the most powerful person in the world is an affable historian called David Christian. The argument goes like this: Gates and Christian know each other. They get along and they share Christian’s

Eighty per cent of success is showing up, said Woody Allen, accurately. As long as your other 20 per cent is pure theatrical genius this turns out to be true of comedy, and it’s true of seasonal crop-picking whoever you are. The catch is that you can’t just show up on day one. You have to keep

Here’s a strange fact from 20th-century chronology: it took our species until 1958 to mount an expedition that successfully crossed the whole Antarctic continent. Three years later, we were already in space. The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58 was a revival of old dreams with

Imagine you’re Kate Bush. You’re planning your first live shows for 35 years and you really, really don’t want to be singing to a sea of smartphones. Do you a) tell your security people to bundle smartphone users out of the Hammersmith Apollo before they so much as press “record”; b) go on social

There was a time when tyranny and fiendishness happened far away, when the evil radiating from it was soaked up by the sheer distance it had to cover to reach civilisation. That time was 140 years ago. Captain Frederick Gustavus Burnaby experienced and survived it, but only just. He was 6ft 4in

Andrew Marr is fired up about the coming political season. Captain Sensible, writing in Prospect magazine, argues that the Scottish referendum and the idea of a European referendum make the next few months super-significant. “It’s hard to remember such a potentially bumpy, and exciting, coming

If you went down to the woods near Biggin Hill when there was still a Biggin Hill air show, you could be sure of a big surprise. At least, you could if Raymond Baxter said so. In one unforgettable episode of Tomorrow’s World in the mid-1970s, as Baxter reached the word “surprise” in the opening

Scottish independence would be a victory for the enemies of freedom and justice, Australia’s prime minister has said, in the most pointed intervention yet by a foreign leader in the independence debate. In an interview with The Times, Tony Abbott declared that independence would be cheered only by

Remember the Axis of Evil? Well, it’s time for an axis of good. As an antidote to evildoers it’s time for a zigzag line of optimism linking as many continents as possible, and here are three names to put on it: Merkel, Abbott and Solís. Each runs a stable democracy bent on improving itself and

Scottish independence would be a victory for the enemies of freedom and justice, the Australian prime minister has said in the most pointed intervention yet by a foreign leader in the independence debate. A win by the Yes campaign would be cheered abroad by countries that opposed British values